Recently, my creative thinking was stirred when I heard someone use the word, saboteur. A saboteur is a person who commits sabotage. Sabotage includes the act of an enemy deliberately damaging property. When I think of saboteur, I think of Satan. 

Our Enemy 

Because believers are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, Satan cannot indwell the life of a believer, but he can still sabotage our lives in a variety of external ways.  

First of all, he can sabotage our lives with lies. Satan is, after all, the father of lies. For him, lying is perfectly normal. He has no qualms introducing a small fib into our mind and wa-la! Our imagination enlarges that one small thought into a ginormous, catastrophic, and life threatening worry.

A reoccurring falsehood that I need to be aware of is that it is up to me to make sure that people like me by setting things right when things go awry between myself and another.

I’d like to think that I have the power to set people “right” when they are thinking something “wrong” about me, but unless someone lets me know what they think about me, I do not possess the power to read their minds. 

But, when someone says to me, “I was offended when you said…” Then I have the opportunity to set things right, by asking them to forgive me for my offense. But, if I  am unaware of how they were offended, then there is nothing I can do. 

Then there is the case of those who are offended by me simply because I hold to a certain belief, standard or opinion. There might be an opportunity to have a conversation or discussion with them and then again, the opportunity may not present itself. But even having a conversation may not clear things up between us and we may just have to agree to disagree. 

If I allow the fib “it is up to me to clear-up any and all misconceptions that anyone may have about me,” then my mental state is at stake. I will be consumed with how to set things right, I think I’m the blessed controller of all things and I am robbed of peace.  

Thankfully, having a peaceful state of mind has become more and more the norm for me so that when my restful thinking turns into restlessness, I know that I’ve allowed a lie from Satan to dominate the truth of God. 

Why bother recognizing the saboteur? When we recognize the saboteur then we can slam the door in his face with the assurance that we’ve shut the door on a lie.